


i've been whispering to ghosts lately

by Slightly Anonymous Sapphic (Cinnamonbookworm)



Category: K-pop, Mamamoo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Blood and Injury, Eclipses, End of the World, F/F, Interrogation, Photojournalist!Wheein, Rebels, Secret Identity, reluctant alliances, semi-graphic depictions of violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-02-28 10:08:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13269231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cinnamonbookworm/pseuds/Slightly%20Anonymous%20Sapphic
Summary: "Give us a better story," Wheein says. "Believe it or not, we're really on your side. But grenades and raids don't change culture. Media changes culture. How are you supposed to win without culture on your side?"Or: The world's been burning since 2014 and Moon Byulyi really does not like reporters.





	1. one

**Author's Note:**

  * For [guaek](https://archiveofourown.org/users/guaek/gifts).



> Abandoned this fic in early 2017 to work on "a loving feeling" and then started going out with my camera and my crew and got bad Wheein feels so here we are.   
> As always this fic is for guaek. #1 Wheebyul shipper. Here's something longform for our dynamic duo. 
> 
> Recommended listening for this fic: Talking to Myself by Gallant | Arsonist's Lullaby by Hozier | Eclipse by Kim Lip of LOONA | Blood Bank by Bon Iver | 4 Walls by f(x)

__

 

 

_I’ve been whispering to ghosts lately_

_I’m begging for more time_

-Gallant, Talking to Myself

 

If Byul is being honest with herself, she probably should’ve just called in sick today. At least, that’s the first thought that crosses her mind in the immediate aftermath, when she’s had time to process everything beyond just this new weight in her arms and the sound of her black boots on concrete. She should’ve just faked a cough, or a stomach virus or something. The operation would’ve been fine without her here today. The mission would’ve been accomplished anyways. She should’ve just-

“Why did we stop?” When the woman next to her, who has stayed mostly silent since they left the parking garage, finally speaks, Byul has to keep from shooting out a hand to clamp over her mouth. Sometimes her mind takes a little while to process when the danger has passed. What follows immediately after her question is, of course, another question. “Is he going to be okay?”

Her eyes flicker down to the half-awake man in her arms, who she’s been helping stumble through the city since they left the parking lot. There’s a fair amount of blood on him right now, she can feel it seeping through his white shirt into the crevices of her leather gloves. She didn’t have time to assess his wound earlier - too far into fight or flight at that point. Now she does.

“Let me check.” She doesn’t mean her words to sound so much like an order, but that’s been happening for a few years now. She can’t quite master the cadences of kind authority the way Yongsun can. Out loud words have never been her specialty. That’s probably why she’s in charge of the technical weapons department and not, like, communications.

“I really need him to be okay,” the woman continues, forcing Byul to realize that _let me check_ does not quite seem to be the same thing to her as _be quiet so I can check_. Her voice is quiet despite the panic.

_Okay_ , she keeps saying, as if any of them have been remotely close to _okay_ in years. Byul supposes their definitions of the word are different. Or maybe years of being in the field mean she no longer associates that word with this situation.

“Hold this.” She unclamps the small black kit from her belt and shoves it in her direction before quickly unbuttoning his shirt to examine the wound where the blood is coming from.

The woman makes a noise at the sight of it. The sound somehow reminds Byul of a small dog.

“I still have to clean the wound,” she reminds her, and tries not to sound like she pities her too much. This was hard for her the first time too. “Let’s not jump to any conclusions before that happens. What’s your name?” It’s not a question she really wants the answer to so much as it is one she thinks might calm her down to answer.

“Jung Wheein,” she says, voice surprisingly steady for how much her hands are shaking. She holds up the kit. “What do you want me to do with this?”

“Open it,” Byul orders, untying her hoodie from her waist and pressing the dark fabric into the wound. Jung Wheein’s partner writhes under her touch. “Do you see the gauze pads, Jung Wheein?”

She fumbles with it for a second, but hands them to her as soon as she gets it open. “Here.” Byul switches out her hoodie for the surely more sterile gauze. He winces again.

“Talk to him. He should be distracted for this part.”

The man with the bleeding shoulder groans. “I have a name, you know.” She never said he didn’t. She just really honestly does not care what his name is right now. All that matters is whether or not she can keep him from bleeding out in this alleyway and get him safely back to the base.

“ _Yoondo!_ ” Wheein exclaims, quickly grabbing one of his hands with hers. Byul watches the scene with a quiet gaze, but goes about tearing off the sleeves of her now-bloodstained hoodie to use as a tourniquet like she isn’t.

She wraps it around the top of his shoulder as tightly as she can. “Be careful with my arm,” he jokes, as if he wasn’t just shot. “That’s my writing arm.”

In response, Byul wraps the gauze a little tighter. “Help him take his shirt off,” she tells Wheein. “The wound is in a kind of precarious place. If we want the gauze to stay put I’m going to need more leverage.”

“We’re not-” she immediately starts, but Byul cuts her off with a glare.

“I don’t care if you’re his girlfriend or his sister or his neighbor. Help him take his shirt off if you want him to live.”

They obey, mostly because they have no other choice. Yeah, Byul thinks, she really should’ve called in sick today. Yongsun would be so much more helpful in this situation. Not that either of them are certified doctors, but if it wasn’t for this guy’s incredibly good but ill-timed sense of humor (his response to her words is to say “haven’t heard that one in a while”) she’s fairly sure she would’ve made things ten times worse already.

She finishes tying the last knot on the gauze. The guy winces. Wheein whimpers. Byul supposes she could’ve done a worse job. It’s done, though, and that’s what matters. No one else is dying on her watch today.

“Come on,” she says. “Let’s get you patched up for real.”

   
  
  


 

 

Their current excuse for a medical bay is located on the fifth floor of the cellar they’re using as a temporary base. To be fair, it’s a pretty nice cellar, with thick walls and relatively modern construction. The doctors are well-trained, too - a few years of experience under their belts now. And, as long as the medical shipments keep coming in, she supposes it’ll continue to be the most efficient-working part of their operation.

Of course, their hospital being their most effective branch probably means they’re losing this fight, but Byul can’t afford to think like that right now.

“Who are they?” Yongsun asks, voice quiet from the chair where they sit in what passes for their waiting room. There’s only really a curtain separating them from the rows of patients, and even that was drawn back a few minutes ago by the woman in question.

“Reporters,” Byul responds, trying to keep from sounding too bitter. “They weren’t supposed to be there. It was supposed to be a quick and clean operation, I-”

“Hey,” her hand comes up to stop her. “It wasn’t your fault. Let me talk to them. I’ll ask what led them there, give them the whole newbie interrogation and all that. Is… is he going to be okay?” Some people haven’t changed quite as much in the years with the rebellion.

Byul sighs. “You sound like her.”

“Who?”

“The blonde one. With the camera. Jung Wheein.”

Yongsun nudges her shoulder. “Introduce me.”

“I don’t date reporters.”

“I never said anything about dating her, Byulyi,” she says, and Byul’s eyes immediately go to her boots. “I just want to know what they know, that’s all.”

Of course. That’s Yongsun. Somehow always looking straight ahead, focused, unblinking. Never quite teasing about the things that the rest of the captains would dive for in a second. She says _dating_ the way Byul might say _idols_ \- things of the past, of long ago. Except, unlike that, dating is still something a lot of people on the base do, just… not the two of them.

There had been a time she thought… but that was a long time ago. Doesn’t mean she doesn’t still worry about her, though. They all worry about her, the ones who know her, at least. The ones who don’t hardly assume there’s anything wrong at all behind their leader’s calming smile. She wonders if they even suspect that they’re losing the war. It’s easy to ignore it when Yongsun - no, when she’s in front of that podium she’s the great and fantastic _Solar Eclipse_ \- goes over facts and numbers and casualties and ends the meetings with her signature “Let’s keep fighting!”

Byul wonders if those reporters know they’re losing the war too.

 

 

 

 

“ _Where’s Yoondo?”_ Wheein demands, rather insistently, from across the wooden table. “One second he was there and when I came back from the bathroom he was gone. _What did you people do to him?_ I’m not answering any of your questions until you answer me.”

She’s fierce, Byul decides. She hadn’t expected that. “Relax,” she assures her. “He’s in his own interrogation with the boss.”

She raises an eyebrow. “The _boss?_ ”

“Yes,” she responds, almost daring her to question it, despite the fact that she’s never quite been able to think of Yongsun as _the boss_.

“Am I not important enough for the boss, then? Why am I being interrogated by _you_?”

Byul attempts a smile, but it looks more cat-eating-the-canary than she’d intended. “They thought you could use a friendly face. Besides,” she straightens the file about the two of them in front of her, “he was the one with the notebook of intel.”

“We’re _partners_ ,” Wheein insists. “Besides, you don’t know half of what’s on my camera.”

“Actually,” Byul opens the file and lets the papers spill out. “We do.”

She’d been shocked by the pictures at first. Seven different locations where their bases had been at one point or another. Groups of people with the Eclipse symbol somewhere on their body. Vendors they used to buy food from, before it became too dangerous. Whatever it is that Wheein and her partner had been doing when they got caught in the crossfire, it goes far beyond what Byul originally thought.

“That’s private property.” She growls.

“Drastic times, drastic measures,” Byul counters. “Now you see why the boss is talking to Yoondo.”

“It’s just an article,” she says, hardly convincing. There’s a reason Byul’s always hated reporters. As if one article isn’t enough to endanger the entire cause. “We were following a lead. Besides, the people deserve to have both sides of the story.”

_Oh. So it was one of_ those _kinds of articles._

“The ‘people’ don’t deserve anything. Our fighters are the only ones who deserve anything, and that’s the protection and anonymity we promised them when they joined this movement. Your article is a threat to that.”

“Then give us a better story,” Wheein says. “Believe it or not, we’re really on your side. But grenades and raids don’t change culture. _Media changes culture._ How are you supposed to win without culture on your side?”

“What journal are you working for?” she asks, ignoring Wheein’s naive, if poetic, statement.

“I’m not saying anything until I know Yoondo is okay.”

“I told you,” Byul says, “he’s-”

“I’ll believe it when I see it.” Wheein holds up one of the pictures from the pile on the table. “I’m a photographer, remember?”

So, instead of talking, they drink. Byul shoves her flask of vodka - left over from a long time ago, since Yongsun is the _worst_ to drink with - across the table, watches it skid over the glossy photos until it lands in front of Wheein.

“You’re not about to drug me with this, are you?” she asks, still skeptic and honestly she doesn’t blame her. She would be too.

“This is what I get for trying to be nice.” Byul reaches over the table and uncaps the thing. “Here,” she offers. “I’ll take a sip first if it makes you feel better.”

The drink burns her throat, but it’s a good kind of burn after a long day. The kind of burn that reminds her that her bombs did detonate correctly and she got to hack the terminal she needed to and no one died today. Sure, now she’s stuck dealing with this reporter problem but on today of all days, when she’s already aching inside thinking of Krystal and Luna and anniversaries of things that shouldn’t have had to exist, a reporter problem isn’t the worst kind of problem she could have.

She passes the flask to Wheein, who takes a sip of her own. Her eyes are focused on something behind her, probably one of the banners hanging on the wall. “What’s that?” she asks, eventually, dark eyes squinting at the blue one.

Byul turns. “It’s Latin,” she explains.”

“No, I mean, what does it say?”

What it says is _Eclipsis vincet omnia._ Except, she’s never really been that good with romanized languages, let alone the original romanized language. All she knows is that, when she and Yongsun were handed their positions, in the midst of all the chaos, Krystal had written the words at the bottom of her page of instructions. Byul put it on a banner because she thought it looked formidable. Not because she knows what it means.

She could’ve looked it up, she supposes, but everyone warned against looking too hard for signs of things that weren’t there. It would’ve sent her off a cliff, she knows that. She would’ve gotten lost looking for answers. She would’ve left Yongsun alone in the dark.

“It’s Latin,” she says. “Who knows?”

“Yoondo might,” Wheein mumbles, giving a dark look towards the double sided glass on her left side. “He’s always been good with other languages.”

“No one speaks Latin anymore,” she reminds her.

“No one carries flasks of vodka in their pockets anymore, either,” Wheein counters. _Good point._ “I’m serious about what I said, though. Find me a better story and I’ll leave you alone. Until then, well, you just became the star of this article.” She holds up her camera. Byul suddenly regrets clearing it’s storage. “Make a cute pose!”

_Click._ She thinks of the polaroids in her bedroom growing up. Waiting for them to come into focus. That’s how this feels right now. Like she’s waiting for something to come into focus. She’s just not quite sure what yet. It’s like the fog of battle from earlier never really cleared out.

Wheein frowns, looking at the photo. “That wasn’t very cute.”

Somehow, that makes Byul smile. “I’ll give you a cute pose when you give up on that article.” Her fingers trace the outline of her watch. She hopes Yongsun’s done with the interrogation soon so she doesn’t have to sit through this much longer. Some part of it is making her feel weird inside. Like, in the minutes that she’s been sitting here talking with Wheein, her intestines have turned to gelatin.

She shrugs. “I suppose _stoic-leader-of-the-revolution_ will have to do, then.”

“I’m not the leader.” She swirls around what’s left in the flask, watching the liquid rise and fall and make waves. “You want a picture of her, you’ll have to try harder than that.”

“ _Her?_ ” Wheein asks, and that’s when Byul knows she’s fucked up. One careless slip of the tongue and she’s exposed even the tiniest detail of their operation. They’ve been keeping their anonymity fairly well so far, with code names and titles that are passed on. No one knows that the current leader of the revolution is a 26 year old woman who sometimes won’t eat her vegetables and doesn’t know the meaning of the word self-indulgence.

Byul has _created_ the narrative of the mysterious genderless authority figure that rules the Eclipse branch of the resistance. She carefully curated it to perfection over the past few years. It works. It makes sense. Everyone underestimates Yongsun anyways. No one’s had any reason to suspect her. Until now.

“ _Shit,_ ” she says. “Off the record, okay?” She hates the desperation in her voice, how she’s obviously just conveyed her one weakness to this… this _reporter_. “ _Off. The. Record._ ”

Wheein looks conflicted. She knows she’s just given her a thread, one she’s probably desperate to pull on, and is now asking that she not. “Okay,” she manages, after a second. When she swallows, she wrings her hands together. “I’ll… It’s off the record.”

“Gender shouldn’t matter anyways,” Byul mutters, still upset about her slip. “Our work should speak for itself.”

“I said,” Wheein continues, a little more forceful this time. “It’s off the record. Just, please. Stop looking at me like _you’re_ the one whose best friend got shot today. It’s making it really hard to hate you right now.”

She’ll try. But she can’t help think that Yoondo’s fate being in the hands of the Eclipse’s doctors and Yongsun’s being in the fate of a reporter are more similar than Wheein could ever imagine. One wrong move and everything they care about could come crumbling down into pieces.

Both of their eyes end up wandering towards the door, like their minds are in the same room, wondering exactly how the other interrogation is going. “It’s hard when a person is your one weakness, isn’t it?” she tries, hoping if they can’t have an interrogation, they can at least maybe bond.

“I don’t know,” Wheein says. “I don’t think I consider love a weakness.”

_So she loves him_ , Byul thinks. _That’s fantastic._

 

 

 

 

“Wheein knows you’re a woman,” Byul says, as soon as she gets to the room her and Yongsun share. She hates that she has to admit her failure, but honesty’s the best way to keep her as safe as possible. To keep both of them that way. After all, there’s a reason two parties are needed for an eclipse to happen. They named their branch this way on purpose.

“I’d hope she does.” Yongsun sits down on her bed with her tablet, looking through the information Byul was able to gather from the transit terminals today. “I did introduce myself to her that way, after all.”

“No, I mean. _She knows you’re a woman._ ”

“ _Oh._ ”

“Yeah.” The apartment is a heavy kind of grey. Brick walls, handmade furniture. Industrial, in an aspect that isn’t quite pretty. Usually Yongsun’s presence is enough to brighten it up, but today she just feels very faded. “I’m sorry. It just slipped out, I-”

Yongsun waves away her apology. “It’s okay. It’ll be okay.” Her eyes look far away.

“How did your side of the interrogation go?”

She gives her half of a smile. Not the smile she gives during weekly meetings, or during their masked broadcasts, but the kind of smile she occasionally reveals during a wedding or a birth. Or when they’re fighting over the last slice of pizza. Just half of it, though. “He’s a good person,” she says, like her mind is already made up about it. “He’s on our side, I think. I think we can trust him. What about Wheein?”

_Wheein_ , Byul wants to say. _Is a reporter._ She doesn’t, though. “She refused to talk until she saw what’s-his-face. Also tried to take my picture and give me a lecture on how love isn’t weakness.”

“It isn’t,” Yongsun states. She thinks that’s kind of ironic coming from her, seeing as even Byul has dated people since the revolution started. Fallen hard and true three times. All ended badly, unrequitedly or violently, but at least she was feeling something. “He has two names, you know. Yoondo and Eric Nam. He’s a foreigner. Came all the way from America only to get stuck here when the fighting started. You shouldn’t call him what’s-his-face.”

“Wheein’s in love with him,” she declares, and maybe it’s a little rude, considering how they’re both obviously much too invested in these outsiders, and how just a moment ago she was saying Yongsun should remember how to feel the falling. The truth is the best when it comes to them, though. She’s just taking the necessary precautions.

Yongsun bites her lip. When she speaks her voice is quieter. “I thought you didn’t date reporters.”

“I don’t.” And it’s not that she’s thinking about _dating_ Wheein, because obviously there’s the _reporter_ thing and the _in love with someone else_ thing and the fact that the fate of her best friend is in her hands. She just is upset by how she can’t seem to escape her orbit, that’s all. Less than a day and she’s already carved her name into Byul’s chest, like a debt.

_I don’t owe her anything_ , she wants to scream, because _she’s_ the one who saved the both of them, after all. Who carried the guy with two names across 13 blocks. Who let them into her base - her life - and even let her drink her vodka. Her heart disagrees with the statement, though. It feels guilty. A kind of guilt she hasn’t felt since Krystal. A kind of guilt she’s scared she feels _because of_ Krystal.

They’re too quiet for too long. Finally, Yongsun holds up her tablet, displaying not the files she was looking at earlier, but the dinner specials of the day. “Do you want the soup?” she asks, and that’s it. They’ve made up. The argument that only existed in the silence between their words has faded.

“Sure.”

 

 

 

 

Interrogation day two goes a little better than interrogation day one, because Wheein has been shown that Yoondo/Eric Nam/this guy everyone and their mother is apparently in love with (Byul hasn’t been this confused about attraction since she was twelve) is safe and well, besides the bullet wound in his shoulder. Also, apparently, he doesn’t care all that much about Byul’s off-the-record statement since he figured out Yongsun was the leader halfway through their interview.

She’d been wearing her mask, Byul knows, and probably had the voice mod on too, so they should be safe, but it unnerves her, to think of Yongsun alone in a room with him when he knows something about her and she’s unaware of it. It feels worse to think that she told him, and didn’t tell her.

“Why don’t you wear a mask?” Wheein asks, five minutes in.

“I wore a mask when you met me,” Byul points out. “Besides, I’m not in charge. No one cares about the identity of a random soldier.” That’s not entirely true, still, she’s trying to throw her off her trail again. If too many things get pieced together, about co-leaders and co-divisions and inherited legacies, Eclipse could fall apart in front of her.

Wheein frowns. “That’s different. Yoondo said your boss’s mask wasn’t a hospital mask like yours, it was like some sort of butterfly mask. He said it reminded him of _King of Masked Singer._ ”

“Where are you from?” Byul cuts her off with the list of required questions that they didn’t get through last time.

“Jeonju. I can’t see you wearing a butterfly mask, though. To be honest.” She has the audacity to smirk.

She marks down her answer. “How long have you been a reporter?”

Wheein’s gaze is steely. “Since this all began. How long have you been a bomb expert?”

Byul ignores her question. “What’s your relationship to Nam Yoondo?” she says, and tries to keep her voice neutral.

“I already told you; we’re partners.” Wheein flicks a piece of lint off of the hoodie she was given the other day by their Department of Necessity.

Byul fights the urge to frown. “Let me rephrase that. How long have you been in love with him?”

Wheein blinks at her. Her eyes are wide and pretty. Her hair looks long, too, now that it’s out of it’s ponytail. She can’t imagine taking pictures with all that hair in her face. She must tie it up every day. For some reason, imagining it feels like a kind of invasion. Something she’s not supposed to see, even just in her imagination.

“What? Oh, I’m not in love with him. He’s a little too old for me, anyways.”

“But the other day,” she hates how hope crawls up her throat, every word another step closer to her tongue. “You said the thing about love and-”

Someone’s voice comes over the radio on her shoulder. _Moon Byulyi, please report to the Tech office. Solar Eclipse has requested your presence_ She’s almost relieved by it. Sure, it ends the interrogation early, but it means she doesn’t have to try and explain to Wheein for ten minutes why it matters so much that she’s not in love with him. That would be hard. Mostly because she herself doesn’t even know the answer.

“I have to go,” she says. “Something of bigger priority came up.”

Wheein doesn’t try to stop her.

 

 

 

 

“We need a victory,” Yongsun tells the table, mask on. She gave up on hiding her voice from this specific group of people a while ago. They’ve earned the right to hear it, she said, in explanation, when Byul asked why. “Moral is low, lower than it has been in a while. I admit some of it probably has to do with my own attitude, so I am working to change that. In the meantime, the Jeonju base was just raided. They are asking for back-up. I am going to help them. There’s rumors that the leader of our opposition is in bad health. I’m hoping to recruit a few more people to our cause.”

It’s those last words that get her. It’s fear in her heart, Byul thinks, not anything else. This terrible sharp fluttery feeling at the words “recruit.” A reminder of when that’s all she was. A reminder of who Yongsun might be thinking about. A reminder of all the ways this could go so so terribly wrong.

“Who did you have in mind?” Seulgi’s commonly referred to as The Bear, but to Byul she seems more of a fox. She holds her head high as she asks this question, dark hair cut blunt at her collarbone. Byul remembers when she’d cut it originally--she had been the one to do it. In a dirty public bathroom somewhere, the world falling apart outside, more than it already had been.

They’d been out on a mission. It had gone wrong, so so wrong. She’d cut Seulgi’s hair in an act of survival, hope that they wouldn’t be noticed as they hid out in Hongdae. Hoping some amount of disfigurement would protect them. That’s around the time Byul had gone blonde.

“I have my ideas,” Yongsun responds. “You all should develop some too. Low-level initiation. No classified information. But more people in the field. We need that. We need to start shifting the culture.”

Byul flashes back to Wheein in the interrogation room, steely unmoving gaze that wouldn’t let her go. _How are you supposed to win without culture on your side?_ She shoves it away. Like the rats that would crawl into their hiding space in those months of chaos. With a broom.

And then Yongsun smiles. It’s faint, behind the mask, but Byul would recognize it anywhere. “That’s all for today. Thank you all again.”

Byul coughs and elbows her.

“Oh yeah, right,” Yongsun says. “ _Eclipsis vincet omnia_.”

“ _Eclipsis vincet omnia_ ,” the small party chants back.

As everyone leaves, Byul raises her glass to Seulgi. Seulgi nods in return, but her own glass remains firmly on the table.

_Ah yes,_ Byul remembers. _This is why I don’t date._ This scar, barely healed. Tissue sutured. Worth a nod and not a glass.

 

 

 

 

The impasse in the interrogation room has taken on a new level of the silent game.

Byul sits. Wheein stares at the Latin on the wall. Byul plays with her knife. Wheein examines her photographs for the third time. Byul coughs. Wheein sighs. Byul rolls her eyes at the sigh.

It’s unbearable. Stuffy and hot and something in the air. Boredom. Butter. You could cut it with a knife.

“You have any exes, Wheein?” Byul asks, and she’s not entirely sure why. Maybe Seulgi’s still on her mind. Maybe she just needs the silence to stop. They’ve exhausted every topic possible for interrogation, and yet Byul knows there’s a reason for the tug in her gut. Something left to settle. Something that isn’t allowing her to just let Wheein go out into the compound with a low-level clearance bracelet like Yongsun had with Yoondo at least a week ago.

Wheein looks up then, hands pausing on her camera, and squints at her. “Why is it you’re always asking me about love?”

Byul doesn’t answer her question. Instead continuing on. “Don’t date your co-workers, Wheein. It always ends in shit.”

Wheein lifts her eyebrows. “I’m not. Remember?”

“This is just general life advice,” Byul replies, trying to wave Wheein’s coy expression away with her hand. “Not about anything specific. Well, not anything specifically related to _you._ ”

“You see an ex or something?” Wheein asks. Byul closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. “You did, didn’t you? Well, spill _._ You’re the only one I’ve talked to for a week and you’ve asked me so many questions… Officer whatever-your-name-is, the least you could do is tell me something about yourself. Besides the obvious like weapons and vodka and tough act.”

When Byul opens her eyes, she finds herself much closer to Wheein than she wants to be. She’d leaned across the table. She must’ve, because Byul can feel her breath on her face. “I never told you my name?” she asks.

“Nope.”

Byul fights the urge to back away. “Byulyi. And don’t call me officer. I’m not a cop.”

“Okay, _Byulyi_.” Wheein smiles, something sharp. “Do you have a last name?”

This time, Byul’s the one to smile. Something about this conversation is tugging at that loose thread in her gut, begging to unravel the knot that’s been lurking there. “That’s classified, I’m afraid.”

Wheein scoffs. “Ah, but what isn’t with you people? What’s a photojournalist to do?”

Byul’s eyes flick towards Wheein’s camera, still sitting on the table. “You could take a picture,” she teases.

Wheein’s lips form a pout. Byul finds her own slightly opening, tongue running over them before she can think about the action.

“But I have too many pictures of you. And, just between us…” If possible, she leans in even more. “You’re a pretty boring model, Byulyi.”

With that she sits back in her chair, smug.

“I- I am not-” The words won’t leave her throat for some reason. They’re stuck there, blocked by an invisible barrier. And then Wheein smirks. And then it’s gone. Byul’s words are pushed through by a feeling that’s not quite rage. Something closer to frustration. “I can surprise you.”

“Really? I thought surprise was classified.”

That gets a laugh of of Byul. A quiet chuckle, deep within her ribcage. But a laugh, nonetheless. Wheein catches it, and her eyes flare up with delight at the sound. “Are you… laughing?”

Byul flashes a smile. A real one, all teeth and usually-reserved charm. “Surprise.”

This time she’s the one to lean forward, pressing the inside of her forearms into the wooden desk, getting into Wheein’s space. Taking advantage of her moment of shock.

She doesn’t anticipate what happens next. Wheein leans forward too, determined. They’re close now, noses practically brushing. All hot breath and a cutting gaze. It takes whatever was in the room earlier and slices through it, so Byul has nowhere to hide.

“Surprise me again,” Wheein dares.

Byul lunges forward, adamantly stumbling into the kiss. Out of practice, yes, but it’s a forceful kind of out-of practice. Wheein’s mouth opens, first in shock and then in reciprocation, and she traces her tongue along the other woman’s teeth in a way that makes Byul say “Fuck” and makes Wheein pull her closer.

The thread in her gut unravels, leaving something burning in its stead.


	2. two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Deep down, Wheein's a girl of the people. Not necessarily of the underground resistance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and we just keep rolling along. plot picks up here more. be ready for some questions and some answers.

_It’s hard to take my eyes off of you_

_So will you continue to be with me?_

_An unforgettable eclipse, it’s destiny._

_-_ LOONA (Kim Lip), Eclipse

 

 

 

In a different world, Wheein might begin to worry that someone was looking for her. In her past life, they would be. This one, well, this was common. Her and Yoondo were prone to spontaneous risks, anything for the scoop. Anything to change the culture.

She didn’t have much at home. Just a cat. And a best friend. She preferred not to think about family. Between the two of them and Yoondo, they were all the family she needed. Cooking together on weekends. Laughing as Ggomo crawled along the windowsills, knocking over Hyejin’s carefully placed flower pots. Groaning as her best friends pretended to flirt with each other just to get a rise out of her.

She’d gone to university with Yoondo, when her and Hyejin’s dream of music hadn’t worked out. Met him in a songwriting workshop, a place for dreamers whose dreams had died. He’d asked her out two weeks in, and was nice when she declined. Nicer when she’d come out, as they’d hid together in a corner of one of the libraries, technically studying for a final.

Then the world exploded.

Not literally. The large-looming threat of nuclear destruction hadn’t been the cause. Something else. Something in the air, maybe. Something in the water. Everybody lost their minds.

She’d brought him with her to Rainbow Bridge. It was a respected journal, and they’d liked her photography portfolio. He was a good writer. And a good partner.

So why was she so nervous to see him again?

The last time she’d seen Yoondo he was bloody, bandaged up in the bed next to her in the med bay. Then she’d gone to sleep and woken up in the interrogation room. He hadn’t been in the hospital when she’d been allowed back. Wheein missed him. In the same way she missed sunlight and Ggomo and a little less than she missed Hyejin.

He was in his own suite, though. At least, that’s what Byulyi had said, somewhere in between the kissing and the “you’re free to go.” The memory makes her smile, in that guilty unconscious way. The kind of way that puts Yoondo’s voice in her head, telling her she’s made things complicated again.

He answers the moment she knocks, obviously expecting her. Yoondo opens the door in pajamas, making Wheein wonder what time it is. She doesn’t think that was ever a question she got an answer to. She might’ve been a little too preoccupied to ask.

“Wheein!” he greets, obviously excited. She’s sometimes tempted to compare him to a dog, if not for other people constantly comparing _her_ to a shiba inu. “I haven't seen you in what? A week? How are you?”

Wheein steps into his suite. It’s sparse, but better than where she’s been living. He even has a microwave. What she wouldn’t do for some microwave popcorn right about now.

“Yeah, it’s been like a week. Listen, Yoondo-”

He shuts the door behind her and his smiling face immediately falls. _Ah_ , Wheein thinks, suddenly understanding _prying eyes._

“Are you okay?” he asks, examining her up and down. “Did they hurt you? God, why did they keep you so long? You didn’t have anything, just photographs! Do you still have the photographs? Did you get _anything_?”

Wheein nods her head and gives him a hopefully reassuring smile. She feels the weight of the last week fall off of her shoulders and splash onto his tiled floor.

“Not hurt,” she promises. “Uh, the interrogator took a special interest in me, I think. They didn’t give a shit about my photographs. And… I might have something, but it’s not much.”

Yoondo’s brow furrows. “Special interest?” he asks, and Wheein prepares for the lecture. “Is this like Taiwan 2.0?”

Yeah… Taiwan was kind of a mess.

Wheein waves her hand. “No numbers. It is what it is. It’s not serious or anything.”

Not-officer Byulyi doesn’t exactly seem like a long-term-relationship kind of person. And making out on a desk in an interrogation room isn’t exactly a recipe for girlfriends. But also, nothing about this exactly screams normal circumstances.

“Nice suite,” she adds.

“Thanks. My new friend Yongsun got it for me.

Wheein groans. “You’re making _friends_? _Here_? _Already_?”

“ _You’re_ hooking up with our story. Here. Already.”

“We’re not hooking up.”

“Not yet.”

“Ew.” Wheein shoves his arm, pushing him backwards only to pull him into a hug. “I missed you, bozo,” she says.

Yoondo hugs her back. “Missed you too, shiba inu.”

“I will walk right back out this door.”

He laughs. “No you won’t. I found popcorn.”

“Touche.”

 

 

 

 

 

A week in, Not-officer Byulyi lets something slip.

“They want recruits, you know,” she’s says, as she’s pushing Wheein up onto the bathroom sink of the suite she’s sharing with Yoondo. She doesn’t say much more about it, just continues, sucking at the spot on Wheein’s collar bone that makes her squirm.

“What?” Wheein asks, through the haze.

“The Eclipses. They want us to recruit some people. Low-level clearance. Not much better than you’re doing now but… you could be part of the team.”

It’s the closest thing to a statement of feelings that Wheein’s gotten out of her. As far as she can tell, Byulyi isn’t exactly great at saying basic human things such as “I like you” or “I’m attracted to you” or “Want to stay for dinner?” She’s much better at acting on impulse and having Wheein read between the lines.

But this… this is something new. This is a true spoken word sign of wanting her around. It’s nice. And also twists up her insides because she’s not so sure about this whole thing.

Deep down, Wheein’s a girl of the people. Not necessarily of the underground resistance.

“What were you before all this?” she asks Byulyi, not sure how to answer her previous statement.

Byulyi looks up and smiles at her, a less and less rare occurrence as the week has gone on. “You won’t believe me.”

Wheein runs a hand through Byulyi’s hair, pushing blonde bangs out of her face so she can get a better look at her eyes. “Surprise me.”

Expectedly, she gets a kiss from that instead of an answer. The answer comes later, in the afterglow. They sit on the cold floor of the bathroom, and stare up at the sparse curtain like it’s stars. “I was training to be an idol,” Byulyi confesses, more to the shower curtain than to Wheein.

Wheein hits her. “You’re lying.”

“I’m serious. I was. Was almost in a group, too. Before everything.”

“This is a bit of a career change, isn’t it?”

Byulyi grimaces. “Isn’t everything? Surely you’re not where you thought you would be.”

“I’m a journalist.”

“And before?”

“Jung Wheein,” she reminds her. “Ring any bells?”

Byulyi squints at her, studying her face. Wheein knows her past is real, in the way she knows anything captured on film is real. Sometimes, however, not everything captured on film exists in her mind. And this past is slowly fading out of her mind.

“Were you one of those Instagram models who advertised diet teas and watches and stuff?”

“Bingo.”

“No you weren’t.”

Wheen shrugs. “It’s just as real as yours. Only difference is I have photographic proof.”

“Do you think you’ll stay? As a recruit?”

Wheein has to pause at that. “I’ll think about it,” she says. “I’m honestly not sure.”

Byulyi leans her head back against the wall. “I can have you meet with one of the Eclipses, maybe do a test mission.”

“You really want me to stay around, don’t you?”

Byulyi doesn’t answer that. Wheein didn’t think she would. Instead of pressing her, she just reaches an arm up to unlock the bathroom door. “Come on,” Wheein says. “Yoondo will be back soon.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Solar Eclipse wears a mask. She’s not as tall as Wheein thought she would be, but she carries a command with her, and the intimidation Wheein feels creeping up her spine isn’t at all deterred by the voice manipulator the leader is using.

“Like _King of Masked Singer_? Yoondo had joked, just outside the door to this room, when Byulyi had brought them to the door. He’d been greeted with a glare. “Nevermind then.”

“Solar Eclipse runs communications,” Byulyi told them. “Lunar Eclipse is occupied right now so she can’t meet with you, but she’s not much of a speaker anyways.”

“Uh, we’ve met already,” Yoondo had added. “She’s the one who interrogated me.”

“Like I was saying, you will be meeting with Solar Eclipse. Her identity is of the most importance. If you ask her any leading questions, you will be removed, and, Wheein-” her face had softened the slightest bit when she’d looked at her. “No photos.”

Wheein had nodded, solemn. And then the big metal door had opened and they’d walked in.

The room is the tallest in the base, Wheein thinks. It reaches up high enough to hang a large tapestry. Blood red and white. An eclipse. Stitched in dark blue at the bottom, barely visible, are dates. Wheein can’t make out exactly what they are, but she knows the last date starts with a 15. Whatever it’s marking must’ve happened recently.

But the world had ended two years before then.

At the end of the room sits Solar Eclipse, in gold silk and a large mask. The fabric is the only extravagant part of her outfit, though. Her pants are simple, replicas of their own uniform gray clothing. Her blouse could pass for a t-shirt if it was cotton. She might have long hair, too, but Wheein can’t quite tell, as it all rests behind a thick veil, the same color as her clothes.

Yoondo bows in hello. Wheein follows him. Then Solar Eclipse motions for them to sit.

Byulyi follows right behind them, standing guard a few feet away. Presumably in case one of them tries anything, although Wheein suspects she trusts her a little more than she trusts Yoondo.

“I have a proposition for the two of you,” Solar Eclipse says. Her digitally altered voice is not high-pitched, but deep. Not quite a male timbre, but something low and gravely. _Alto_ , Wheein thinks. “I presume you’ve been filled in on the prospect of being recruits.”

She nods her masked head at Byulyi, who nods back. “ _Eclipsis vincet omnia_.”

“ _Eclipsis vincet omnia._ ”

“However,” she continues. “I have more to add to that.”

Wheein shoots a nervous glance at Yoondo. She’s not sure what that could possibly mean, and he doesn’t seem to know either.

“Jung Wheein,” Solar Eclipse says, and Wheein’s blood runs cold. “I will grant you a test.”

“A test?” Wheein asks.

Solar Eclipse nods. “Yes. A test. You will be allowed to accompany fielders Moon Byulyi and Kang Seulgi on a mission into Seoul. Just one. Both to test your likening to the field and to test whether or not we, as an organization, can trust you.”

The sudden reveal of Byulyi’s last name jars her senses. Wheein barely hears the rest of what Solar Eclipse says. It’s an interesting name, for sure, but not necessarily something terrible.

_That’s classified._

She’d been so reluctant to share it, though. Even now, Wheein is sure she must not be enjoying the reveal of it. She’s desperate to look behind and check, but doesn’t, because upsetting one of the people who’s been giving them shelter and food for the past two weeks would not be a good idea.

“How do you know I won’t just run away or go rogue out there?” Wheein asks.

“Ah,” Solar Eclipse says. “I was thinking you might ask this. This is where you, Eric Nam, come in.”

Nobody uses Yoondo’s American name. Nobody in Seoul, anyways. Wheein wonders why Solar Eclipse chose to use it. Maybe she’s American? That would make for an interesting story. What’s an American doing organizing the rebellion in Korea?

Yoondo looks up. It’s only then Wheein realizes he was having a hard time looking at the fabled boss of the operation. She wonders what happened during his initial interrogation. Damn it, she should’ve asked more questions before they walked into this.

“Yeah?”

“If Wheein is going out into the field, that means you must stay back. We need to, let’s say, break up the partnership. Some insurance, if you will.”

“So I’ll come back?” Wheein asks.”

“Precisely.”

It makes sense. It totally makes sense, but also… there’s something not right here. The tapestry. The masks. The voice editor. Byulyi not telling her her last name. Solar Eclipse using Yoondo’s American name. There are too many worries in one room.

“And if I don’t like it? If I hate the field or you can’t trust me as a member of your resistance?”

Solar Eclipse smiles under her veil, and it’s so obscured Wheein can’t help but feel it’s synthetic. “Why, then you can leave.”

“Just like that?” Yoondo asks. “We can just waltz out? With what we know?”

“What do you really know, though? she asks. “That I’m a woman? I’ll freely admit that. I have no shame in that.”

“ _What do we know?_ ” Wheein asks, incredulous. “We know so much! We know where your base is, who comes and goes here, even the names of two of your agents!”

“This is not our base. Merely a temporary rest stop. And, excuse me if I’m wrong but, barring the nurses, and barring me, the only two agents you’ve come into contact with are Yongsun and Byulyi, correct? As for their names, you have no reason to believe those are not aliases. We are a group known for switching identities, after all.”

_So that’s it,_ Wheein thinks _. Everything we have. Poof. Gone._

“Of course, that is worst case scenario. We are hoping that the two of you join our team. But that requires cooperation. From the both of you. And uttermost trust. If Eric tries to preemptively leave, or Wheein abandons our agents in the field, the remaining party will _not_ be allowed to return home. Understood?”

Wheein turns to look at Yoondo. He seems tentative, but still nods his head in agreement. Wheein follows suit. She trusts him. With her life. It’s one day. One mission. They can do it.

“We’ll do it,” Wheein says.

“Where do we sign?” Yoondo asks.

“No need for signatures. Your word is enough.”

As they leave, Wheein’s eyes drift to the tapestry again. This time she can see the final date clearly. _151026._ For the life of her, she can’t remember anything all that remarkable that happened that day.

 

“Who’s Kang Seulgi?” Wheein asks Byulyi, the night before her test run. They’re eating in the suite, Yoondo out again. Soup rations and what’s left of the popcorn. The world might be dark outside, Wheein’s not quite sure.

Byulyi frowns. “Remember how I told you not to date your co-workers?”

“Yeah, about that. Aren’t we about to break that rule?”

“She’s an ex,” Byulyi says, instead of answering the dating question. “We’re on good terms now. No need to worry, just… Don’t tell her what we’re doing.”

“Yeah, what _are_ we doing?”

“I’m serious, Jung Wheein.” Byulyi’s face is a stone. “She may see it as direct interference not only with the mission, but with your motivations. You are not a viable option for recruitment if your only attachment to us is me.”

“I don’t even know if I want to join you.” Wheein’s spoon makes waves in her soup.

Byulyi smiles, but there’s something distant about it. “That’s what the test is for.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

The rain is the first thing Wheein notices when they leave the base. Not the sun. The sun is hidden away, veiled by clouds like the remote smile of Solar Eclipse. The buildings around them are as she remembers: rugged and empty. Rubble clogs the streets, wet from rain, looking like the crumbs of an overdone brownie.

Kang Seulgi walks in front of her, gun drawn. Her short hair is tied under the nape of her neck into a tight, precise bun. They must be the same height. Or something close. Wheein wonders if Byulyi has a thing for short girls.

She walks with precision, big black boots crunching in the mix of dirt and demolished street that is the ground beneath them. Wheein tries to follow in her steps, her own boots feeling heavy and too-big on her feet.

Their mission is to destroy a supply warehouse. No one lives there, Byulyi had said. They just keep their chemicals there. The ones they’ve been using to make these new weapons. There may be a guard or two--she’d said that, too--but Seulgi should be able to take them out.

Wheein hates chemical weapons, more than she hates almost anything else, the way they run through every substance. The way almost nothing is safe anymore. She hates how a single drop of something can make a street crack open, or create a wall of fire. It’s an easy mission. With a clear and hateable target.

Five blocks in, Seulgi hears a noise. She clamps her hand over Wheein’s mouth and the three of them duck into the hollow ruins of a building. Seulgi’s leather glove is stiff and it smells stale, but Wheein doesn’t fight against the tight pressure against the lower half of her face. Her eyes meet Byulyi’s, who puts a single finger over her own mouth in a _shh_ gesture.

A figure treads outside. Only shadow. Seulgi leans her head down to Wheein’s ear. “Are you going to stay silent if I let you go?” she asks, voice all a hiss. Wheein nods.

Seulgi lets go and makes eye contact with Byulyi, who also nods, hand coming up to grip Wheein’s forearm. “Stay with me,” she says. “Seulgi is going to check if it’s danger.”

Sure enough, Seulgi steps away from them, closer to the fractured window of the building. It must’ve been a store at some point. Possibly selling clothes. Or maybe music. There’s burnt out wooden shelving sitting right in front of the window, all merchandise gone. Seulgi ducks there, and rests her gun on the highest shelf.

Wheein’s eyes widen when she sees it, but she keeps her word and does not make a sound. Seulgi twists something and a small glass circle is suddenly there. A magnifying glass. Wheein watches her lean down to look through the scope. She moves the gun suddenly, slowly panning it to the side until she stops. She fiddles with a few more knobs. Wheein holds her breath.

Then Seulgi lowers the gun. She turns back towards them, imperceptibly silent, and makes a series of hand gestures. Byulyi makes a different series back.

“A refugee,” Byulyi explains, breath hot on Wheein’s ear. “No perceptible weapons. Low danger.” Wheein nods.

They hide out there for a few more minutes, waiting until the refugee has turned the corner. As they pass, Wheein can hear their footsteps, crooked and ambling. Every sense of hers screams out at her to go out and help them. Show them the cellar, the hospital, bring them to the suite she shares with Yoondo. She fights back, though, and does not move.

They exit with the same caution as before.

“You can’t help them,” Seulgi explains. All of Europe and Asia are burning. There are more refugees than all of the rooms we have. We take care of our own.”

“But you’re fighting back, aren’t you?” Wheein asks.

Byulyi meets her eyes with a hardened gaze. “Greater good,” she explains. “Preventative measures are more effective than responsive ones.”

“Listen to Byul,” Seulgi says. “She’s in charge of tactical weapons for a reason.”

She makes a motion then, with her fingers. More code that wheein doesn’t understand. Left thumb and forefinger shaped in a C. The rest of her digits curled into a circle, fingertips resting on her thumb. Byuli sends a glare her way and she stops it.

They continue onwards.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two weeks is a long time. Wheein is beginning to realize this, as they grow closer and closer to her destination. A lot must’ve happened in those two weeks underground. If it hadn’t, she certainly would’ve recognized where they’re going by now.

It’s a part of Seoul she’s been a million times. Her office is around here. Her apartment is around here. The park where she used to play with Yoondo’s dogs back in university.

It’s greyer now. The street is cracked. The buildings are not vacant, but the street is quiet. _Hiding_ , Wheein realizes. _They must’ve warned them._

Byulyi had disappeared the night before the mission. Yoondo’s friend Yongsun, too. She’d been gone for hours, leaving Wheein to pace, anxious and alone. Her only explanation when she came back, mere hours before they had to leave, was “There was a meeting.”

The evidence of that meeting, however, can be found in the televisions of a store display. No sound, only video. Text scrolling across the screen, interrupted occasionally by static. For the first time, Wheein sees both Eclipses, and the whole of high-clearance Eclipse, standing in the room she had been in earlier, in front of the tapestry.

Wheein can’t make out individuals. They are all in the dark, except for the two in the center, in gold and silver versions of her own clothes. The subtitles running under them tell the story, in numbers. Coordinates. And dates. It’s only at that moment that Wheein realizes it’s airing as they move.

They were given a window of five hours to complete this mission. She now understands why. To warn civilians means to warn the enemy. They probably have only about one hour before they are met with attack fire.

Seulgi curses when she sees the televisions. “We’re running late.”

Byulyi frowns, solemn. Then she grabs Wheein’s hand. “Time to run.”

The world having been alerted to their presence, the three of them sprint through the streets. Wheein feels the cold, stormy air, tear through her lungs. Byulyi lets go of her hand as soon as she’s going, like pushing a kid on a bike.

Seulgi runs with one eye peeking through her gun, looking out for the familiar blue insignia of the enemy. Wheein follows, unarmed except for the backpack on her back, containing the most important part of the mission. Byulyi holds something that isn’t a gun. Wheein isn’t sure exactly what it is, only that she’s never seen it before.

She hears the noise it makes behind her, though. Something crackling. Something electric, maybe. She’s running too fast to be able to look.

They fly through the empty streets. Cars sit, haphazardly parked on the side of the road. No one walks. No one drives. All lights are off. All doors are locked, but there is not that feeling of emptiness there was in the ruins by the cellar. Instead, there’s a feeling of surveillance. Of being watched.

Wheein is suddenly hyper-aware of her own face. Only covered by a dust mask in the colors of the Eclipse. She pulls her baseball cap lower over her face.

The warehouse is large. Large and flat. It’s situated in between two much taller buildings. The plan is to smoke out anyone who might be inside, wait for Seulgi to clear the guards by the door, and then light the thing on fire. It’ll burn for days.

Wheein’s job is to carry the grenades. Not toss them. Just have them in her pack for Byulyi and Seulgi to use. “It’s a no guilt job,” Byulyi had said, when they were leaving. “Whatever happens in there, all you did was carry a backpack.”

The truth is, they know she’s a photographer. Not a warrior. She’s used to the smoke of the field, burning debri and rubble, being out here even after evacuation warnings, with Yoondo and her camera. She’s not used to being an active participant in it, however, just a watcher. Just someone sitting on the sidelines, recording for posterity.

Wheein takes a deep breath as she unzips the backpack. She sits on the curb in front, keeping watch. Byulyi throws the first grenade. Smoke erupts. She presses a button and their dust masks light up. Wheein tries not to breathe.

“You can inhale,” Byulyi tells her. “These masks are specially engineered for this kind of mission.”

Then her and Seulgi duck inside, holding their weapons. Wheein is left on the pavement.

She’s supposed to scream if she sees anything. At the top of her lungs. Byulyi, who’s just inside the door, will hear her first, and alert Seulgi. They’ll get out of there and blow it up, even if there are still guards left inside.

This is the test part, Wheein thinks. The waiting. Just sitting here on the pavement with nothing to do. Nothing keeping her here. Nothing to prevent her walking away and leaving them except for the knowledge that Yoondo will be stuck if she does. And even that feels abstract, unreal, when she’s so close to home.

A shadow flickers in the corner of her vision. Wheein jerks her head to the side. Nothing.

It’s got to be her nerves. She gets them every now and then. This happened in Singapore, too. Her nerves got the best of her and she almost left Yoondo alone in a room with an armed military official, no camera evidence to threaten him with if he killed him.

But, no. There it is again. Just in the corner of her vision. Damn. She should’ve packed her glasses when they’d gone out to try and find the Eclipse two weeks ago. They tend to fall off in high-pressure situations, though, so she usually doesn’t.

This time, Wheein keeps her eyes trained on the building to the far left of the block. Her head remains forward, but her eyes are peeking. And someone is there, ducking around the corner with a camera and a microphone. A video journalist. With long dark hair, down to her waist. Fatal Ahn Hyejin. A block away.

Wheein doesn’t mean to, but she catches her eye. She tries to turn away quickly, make her best friend go away, leave this place before it catches fire, but she can hear the footsteps. She’s coming closer. Stubborn as always.

“Wheein? Jung Wheein?” Hyejin asks, when she gets closer. Not loud enough for Byulyi to hear, probably, but loud enough to worry Wheein. She puts a single finger over her mouth. _Shh._ Hyejin immediately closes her mouth.

She studies her eyes. “I see you, Wheein. Where have you been? What are you doing? I couldn’t get a hold of either of you for weeks! I know service is terrible right now, but you could’ve tried. Garbled messages are better than none.”

“I couldn’t,” Wheein says. “I was underground. Listen, Hyejin, we’ll talk later, but you need to get out of here.”

“ _You_ need to get out of here. I’m recording footage for Rainbow Bridge, trying to get the Eclipse on film.”

Wheen’s breath hitches. “Hyejin. I need you to listen when I say this. You. Need. To Leave. That building’s about to go up.”

Hyejin frowns. “How do you know that?” Her eyes drift then to Wheein’s dust mask, glowing a red color, and to the small insignia just below the corner of her left eye. “Eclipse?” she asks. “God, Wheein, how deep in are you?”

She’s not understanding. Wheein’s breath begins to catch. It comes out ragged, erratic, despite the mask blocking the smoke from the doorway. Tears flush her eyes and she’s not quite sure why. Panic. Bright red and blotchy.

“Please leave, Hyejin.” Her words are pleading, and the tears are too, streaming down her face and under her mask, mixing with the rainwater. “Please. I promise I’ll come home tomorrow. _Tomorrow._ Just. You need to leave.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

Wheein takes her hand, then, squeezing it with a tightness she usually reserves only for horror movies and the occasional speeding car. She stands up and Hyejin follows. “Go back to your corner then, just stay out of the way.”

“No. Not when I know where the Eclipse is. Not when I can get their faces on film.”

The panic flashes again. Wheein thinks of Byulyi, of what she deserves and what she doesn’t. “No.”

“What?”

“NO. Come on.” She pulls her across the block, walking around to the corner where Hyejin was hiding earlier. Then she ducks down, and tries to take a deep breath.

“I will explain everything later.”

“Where’s your camera?”

“I will-”

“ _Gabriella Jung Wheein_. What did they do to your camera? What did they do to Yoondo? Where is he? Where have _you_ been? Did they _hurt_ you?”

All she can do is shake her head. Her throat is tight, tense. “Please, Hyejin. I’m begging you. Stay out of this. Stay here.”

Hyejin squeezes her hand back. The panic doesn’t subside. “Only if you stay, too. Just until the building goes. I don’t want you to get hurt, either.”

“I won’t-”

She tries to leave, but Hyejin’s grip on her is firm. It’ll be okay, she thinks. Okay if I’m just a few feet away and not right there when they come out. I can just come out and explain what happened. It’ll be okay. Yoondo will be okay.

_Boom._ Fire erupts. Wheein can see it, bleeding out into the street. Footsteps pitter patter. _Shit._

“I have to go now, Hyejin, but I promise, I’ll be back.”

It’s only then that she notices Hyejin’s own eyes are filled with tears. “Promise me?”

Wheein nods. “I promise.”

Then she goes out to the street. Fire blazes in front of her. The backpack is gone. Byulyi and Seulgi are gone too. All that’s left is a camera. Her camera. Shattered in the rubble. Wheein runs to try and salvage it, but it’s gone. Broken. Her lens dented, pushed in.

Wheein tries the playback button. She sees an image. A picture she did not take. Blurred and haphazard. Maybe taken accidentally. The tapestry, and just behind it, metal. A door.

“I thought you had to go,” Hyejin’s voice startles her.

Wheein lets herself fall apart then, in the rubble and the rain, with smoke beginning to fill her lungs. Frantic, she feels for her mask, but the familiar heat of the lights are gone. The red Eclipse light is off.

“They left,” Wheein tries, but even her voice won’t work. It doesn’t believe it either.

Hyejin helps her up and pulls her into a hug. “Come on,” she says. “Let’s go home.”


	3. three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Byul had been foolish to think the reporter would prioritize any sense of love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> recommended listening: eraser by taeyeon, blood bank by bon iver, 4 walls by f(x)

_The secret that you knew but don’t know how to tell_

_It fucks with your honor and teases your head_

_But you know that it’s good, girl_

_‘Cause it’s running you with red_

-Bon Iver, Blood Bank

 

 

The thing about reporters, Byul has figured out, first through a year as a trainee at a prestigious company and then through the following apocalypse, is that it doesn’t matter how nice they are. They’re like sharpshooters in that way. Just with cameras instead of bullets. At the end of the day, they have a job to do, and that comes before any sense of loyalty or morality or--

“It’s not like she was your girlfriend or anything,” Seulgi had shot at her, when they’d returned to the base without Wheein. Their test subject having disappeared while they were scouting the building.

She’d been foolish to think the reporter would prioritize any sense of love.

Byul was going to give her the camera. Hand it to her as a “thank you,” a parting gift in case she decided not to stay. She’d deleted all the incriminating photos. The symbols and the interrogation room and everything in between. The only thing kept was the picture of herself, making a cute face for Wheein as they stalled for time.

Yongsun had been content with that idea. God, Yongsun probably hated her now. She had made her trust them, made her give those outsiders a chance. A terrible idea, especially after what had happened to their predecessors.

It was anger that smashed the camera. Anger and betrayal and _Seulgi was right_. Jung Wheein had disappeared when they’d left the building. Left the bag of grenades and run. Like a traitor. Like a coward.

Everything afterwards happened in a blur. The journey back home, the meeting with Yongsun, the days that followed. She still felt stuck in that moment, lifting and throwing and smashing. She sees her in her dreams, though. Jung Wheein, blonde hair down to her hips, tied up in a ponytail. She walks away from her, in the smoke-filled empty streets. In a trenchcoat. Like a detective from ages past. “Don’t miss me,” she says, and then she leaves.

The worst part. Worse than her heart and her head and the ache that exists in both places (Byul’s been through heartbreak before, she knows how to shove it away), is dealing with the aftermath. Nam Yoondo. Their prisoner.

They don’t take prisoners. It’s not in their code. Wasn’t written in the rule book. It was supposed to just be a precaution. It was supposed to be an “if.” It was supposed to be a lot of things. Now it’s a man dressed in grey living in their interrogation rooms because there is nowhere else to put him.

“I just don’t understand why she would leave me here,” he says, for possibly the thirteenth time, three weeks into his sentence. Byul grips the clipboard in her hand a little tighter, trying to focus on that little space between the boxes that read “lunch” and “dinner instead of on his eyes, on the bags and the sadness and the betrayal. She’s seen it in her own. Reflected back from the mirror.

He wasn’t expecting it. Anywhere. Whereas Byul maybe should’ve smelled it in the air. Deep down. No one has a face like that without bad intentions. Pretty people will always disappoint you.

“Are you even listening to me?” he asks again. “Why can’t Yongsun come and do my checks again? She at least talks to me.”

“I talk to you.”

Yoondo hits his head against the wall behind him. “You hate me.”

Byul makes a mark on her clipboard next to the words _Social Interaction (3)._ “I’m not the one who left you here.”

“Wheein doesn’t- Wheein _wouldn’t_.”

She looks up then, and his eyes meet hers. Stormy. “There was rubble and smoke and an empty street. _She left you._ ”

“But it would’ve been so easy to just come back and leave with me. There was no point in doing this. No point at all.”

He wilts under her glare. Maybe it’s excessive. Maybe she’s not the person who should be his only interaction. She needs this, though. It’s his fault she didn’t come back. He’s not good enough insurance. She didn’t care about either of them enough. He should’ve made her care enough.

“You don’t have to pretend that you’re not hurt too,” he says, at the end of the check.

Byul sneers. “Don’t pretend you know me.”

“She left us both here. Isn’t that why you’re here and not anyone else? You need someone else to mope with you? It can’t be because you like me all that much.”

“I-”

“Great to know I’m the only one you don’t care about thinking you’re weak.”

“ _Don’t ever call me that._ ”

“Your words. Not mine. First day of this. _Stop being weak._ ”

She hates this. Hates him. This reminder. He’s not a quiet prisoner, either; he likes to joke and monologue and sing sometimes. He likes to talk about Wheein and question her motives and, in turn, force Byul’s mind to go to places it doesn’t anywhere but this room.

This is the reason Yongsun can’t come back here. She won’t have him worrying her, making her question her decisions. No, he’s a journalist for a reason. He’s good with words. She won’t let that be her downfall.

Byul makes one more mark on her clipboard. “She left you. She’s not coming back. Get over it.”

When she leaves, she locks the door, looking at the glass and wondering if it’ll shatter the way the lenses did.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The truth is, Yongsun is probably too preoccupied to take care of their prisoner anyways. “It’s fine,” she says, when Byul asks her if she wants it to change. “Just keep him alive. Someone will have to come for him eventually.”

“Okay.” Byul bites her lip. Her friend looks tired. A kind of tired that’s not necessarily related to sleep. Something is weighing on her. The date maybe.

It’s too close to the anniversary. Wounds already raw, rubbed worse. “He has a family, right?” Yongsun asks. “Wheein will tell them what happened and they’ll-”

“They’re in America, Yong.”

Her hand finds the bridge of her nose. It rests there for a while. Byul wonders if she’s trying not to cry. “Oh right,” she says. “The block. He can’t have heard from them in years.”

She’s not directly saying _it’s worse for him than you_ , but it feels like it. In that way Yongsun will sometimes do it, to soften the blow of the truth. “He says she was like family,” Byul admits. It’s sour on her tongue.

Fuck Jung Wheein. Not just for betraying her but betraying him. She’s the worst kind of person, the kind of person who-

“Someone should see where she is.”

That idea sounds like a level of hell Byul’s not exactly interested in touring. “There’s no need for that. She knows where we are. She knew the terms of the deal.”

Yongsun groans. “We were too good to them. Made her think he’d be okay.”

“You specifically told them punishment would be given. I don’t know what more you could’ve done.”

She looks up then, fingers falling from the bridge of her nose. “You couldn’t have done anything either, Byulyi. Her choices are her own. As clouded as they may be.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

“This happened in Taiwan, too.”

Yoondo’s exercise in silent treatment lasts about 20 minutes. To his credit, it’s much longer than Byul had thought it would be. He lifts his head up from where it’s been resting in his arms, dark hair ruffled and messy.

“Taiwan?” Byul asks. Wheein might’ve mentioned something about Taiwan. Never specifics, though. Nothing finite.

“We were there to interview a politician. Was only supposed to be a week. One day I got stuck in traffic and she got stuck bargaining with his wife. Things got complicated after that.”

“Complicated how?”

Yoondo laughs then, but its bitter and broken. The edge of a knife. “You’re not the first woman she’s left me stranded for.”

_You’re not the first._ It echoes in her head. Bounces around. Eventually it finds its way down the hollows of her throat to her chest. Her heart beats in time to it. Soon the anger bubbles up, the kind that tells her she needs to leave.

“She came back, though,” Yoondo adds. “She always came back.”

Byul slams the door.

 

 

 

 

__

 

 

 

 

 

The base is easy enough for Wheein to find again. One of the only buildings left standing in this corner of Seoul. Her and Hyejin don’t enter through the back door though, the one that would lead to the elevator and take them down. Instead, they make their way through the upper floors, walking through lines of empty rooms that once held hospital beds.

“Where did they all go?” Hyejin asks.

“Downstairs. They have a med bay down there.”

“No not the beds.” Hyejin left her camera at home today. Instead she carries with her a purple bag, strapped across her body and over one shoulder. “The people. The patients. Surely they couldn’t just leave the same way as everyone else.”

Wheein shrugs. “Maybe they got transferred. The really injured ones, at least. I figure there are some diseases though where it would’ve been safer to run out of there than to stay.”

There’s an elevator somewhere at the center. Hyejin had found blueprints--old old ones--that said so. Hospital corruption led to greedy CEOs, and greedy CEOs had led to a private elevator.

“It’s keycode access only,” Hyejin had explained, as they looked over the blueprints from the safety of Wheein’s kitchen apartment. “Luckily, it’s had a few years of semi-toxic rain under an open roof. We should be able to pry it off and re-wire it so it lets us down.”

“And you’re sure it’s there?”

“The room was tall, right? Had to be against codes. Just like this elevator. And, if you’re smart, you keep all of your secrets in one place.”

Now they’re traipsing through empty corridors. Hyejin’s hand in hers. The glass from the windows are all gone, probably stolen and repurposed downstairs, Wheein thinks. Most of what used to be the hospital is empty now. It’s reminiscent of an eggshell, white and broken, and falling apart.

At the end of the hall lies a room with a large oak door. Definitely not something that should be there. The rest of the doors (or the doors that remain) are made of metal and glass, straightforward, simple, and easy to see through. This one could not be any more opposite. It’s menacing, almost, in it’s stature. The handle is a softer wood, and the grain slides smooth under Wheein’s palm as she opens it.

It’s unlocked. Figures. No one locks their office when they’re running for their life.

“Bingo,” she says, and Hyejin laughs. This is just like old times, when they were in middle school, looking for adventure just around the next corner.

The inside of the office is sparse. This was probably the most heavily-looted room, judging by the amount of holes left in the walls. From paintings, plaques, shelves. Things unnecessary when the world is burning. As far as Wheein knows, the tapestry in the Eclipse headquarters is the only piece of art in the whole operation. And even it means something.

They’d looked up the date, too. _151026._ Nothing. There’d been a small skirmish that day, but nothing compared to the events before and after. No one had died, even. The date is utterly meaningless, and yet, there it sits. Stitched into the only art to be found.

It burns a hole in Wheein’s mind. Drives her crazy. There’s nothing more enticing than a secret.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hyejin finds the elevator first. It exists in the private bathroom, just off of the office. Where the shower should be instead are sliding metal doors. A keycard lock. And a toilet, off to the side.

Wheein laughs when she sees it.

“What?” Hyejin asks. “Even corrupt men need to shit.”

Sure enough, the roof above the bathroom caved in long ago. Bits and pieces of it still remain, in piles on the floor. The sun hits the back of Wheein’s neck like a prying pair of eyes, telling them to hurry.

Hyejin bends down to examine the keycard lock. Wheein herself looks at it from above. The adhesive seems to be falling off, pulling it slightly away from the metal doors.

“Should’ve used magnets,” Hyejin says. “I suppose he was even cutting corners here, though.”

Wheein grabs a piece of roof to the left of her. A shard of tile among many, and whacks it down. It loosens slightly, and she goes to hit it again, but Hyejin’s firm hand on her arm stops her.

“We don’t want to cut through the wires.” She digs her fingernails around the side of the casing, and pulls. It pops off quickly, dragging a family of wires with it. Hyejin smiles. “We’re in.”

Wheein didn't necessarily have a plan when she proposed this. There’s probably nothing more dangerous than traipsing, unarmed, into the current HQ of the Eclipse. She just knew she needed to get Yoondo out. And she needed to know what was behind that door.

They don’t have weapons. Well, unless the laptop Hyejin brought counts as one. It might’ve, in an earlier age. Nowadays, though, it’s a flip of a coin whether the powerline you’re attempting to hack has been knocked down or not. Wheein’s hoping she can survive with the power of her words and her wit.

After about an hour of hacking, The elevator makes a noise. Wheein jolts up suddenly from the nap she’d been taking as Hyejin worked. She helps her put away the laptop and pull her to her feet. Hyejin reaches for her hand, and Wheein finds some amount of comfort in their intertwined fingers.

“You ready for this?” she asks.

Wheein nods. “Operation Don’t Die. I’m all in.”

The elevator doors close behind them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

They must’ve been further underground than Wheein had remembered. The elevator goes down. And down. And it keeps going. The lights flicker. Shaky silence. Wheein squeezes Hyejin’s hand. Her friend’s face exists half in shadow half in light. The speedy flickers of a horror movie. The kind they used to watch together in better days.

Then the lights just stop. It’s darkness, all the way down. Wheein pulls Hyejin into a hug, handholding no longer sufficient to push away the overwhelming feeling of dread. They hold each other in the dark, pressure building in their ears, for what seems like days. The only sound the rush of the elevator as it goes, deeper and deeper.

Wheein comforts herself by thinking of the man who originally used this elevator, before his cellar was converted into the temporary base for a (literally) underground resistance. Him taking his date or his secretary or whoever he was fucking--because secret elevator screams affair--into this death cavern of an elevator, only for the romance to be entirely killed by the ride down. She supposes it was probably too long to consider going back up, though, so they had to have ended up stuck down there, mood killed, unwilling to leave.

And then, in the middle of her fantasy, they touch down. The lowest level. The elevator hits the deep ground with a _thud_ and then the doors open. Wheein braces herself for someone to attack them, anyone. But there’s nothing. No sound. Just silence.

Wheein and Hyejin pull away from each other, returning to joined hands, and take their tentative first steps out of the elevator. The room is dark, too. Darker than even her adjusted eyes can handle, but there’s a light switch to her left. She traces her fingers along the side of the wall until she finds it and then _flick._

Instantly, the room illuminates. It’s not a white light, though, but a red. A maroon color. More fog than light. Something to swim through. At first, she thinks an alarm has been set off, but, as her and Hyejin wait in the stillness, nothing happens. That’s when Wheein allows herself to look.

In front of them is a small set of stairs, and then, above that, a landing, where two mounted portraits sit on a desk. Between them, a polaroid photograph that Wheein can’t quite make out. The portraits, though, she can see so clearly. And she doesn’t merely recognize the subjects, but _knows_ them. There once was a time where she couldn’t avoid them.

The first: A woman bathed in yellow light. Blunt bangs and honey hair. A tattoo on the small of her wrist. An eclipse. Luna, in all her glory.

Wheein hasn’t thought about her in years. She’d had this song, though, and in the weeks leading up to the end of the world it would play on the radio every second possible. Voice like heaven and honey. She’d made Wheein miss singing.

What is the former pride of SM entertainment doing here?

Hyejin elbows her ribs. “Wheein… look,” she says, pointing to the second portrait, mouth aghast.

And then there’s Krystal Jung. Hair a vibrant red color, different from the signature dark locks Wheein remembers. Same familiar stare, though. Same dark eyes reminding you of her presence. Icy, almost. Always less approachable than Luna, but with fans clamoring after her nonetheless. She’d been aloof, mysterious. And very, very attractive.

Wheein can remember, even now, watching her dance on the television screen in high school. Being drawn to her for reasons she didn’t yet quite understand. Krystal Jung. What a throwback.

But once again, _what?_

The answer lies in the polaroid, sandwiched between the two portraits like an afterthought. Black and white. And there, laughing, are Krystal and Luna. Together. Masks pulled up onto their foreheads. A work break in a concrete room.

“Well fuck,” Hyejin says when she sees it.

Wheein agrees wholeheartedly with that statement. If she’d known she was going to stumble across a story of this intensity, she would’ve brought a camera with her. Kpop stars leading the resistance? That’s something unbelievable, even in this new world.

“Why would they keep this around, though?” Wheein asks. “Surely they don’t just like to come stare at themselves.”

Hyejin shrugs, eyes still glued to the polaroid. “Maybe it’s for indoctrination. Like easier to just hit them with this than explain everything.”

“Why not just take off their masks, then?

The purpose of the portraits is confusing. They’re old pictures. From the days when the word “idol” meant something. _Although_ , Wheein thinks, looking around the room a second time, _maybe it still does._

Byulyi had mentioned training to be an idol. She’d brushed it off as a joke, but maybe there was something to it. It would make sense, if Krystal and Luna were the ones running this operation. Maybe they took some trainees with them.

They would’ve had to run far. The section of Seoul with their company is on the other side of the city. But they’d already have a following… have access to equipment to get their message out fast… The Eclipse’s main form of communication with the public is video, after all.

“Wasn’t Krystal American?” Wheein asks.

Hyejin finally turns away from the polaroid, then. “I think so, yeah. She had that sister. Jessica Jung. From that other group.”

“Solar Eclipse, when I spoke to her, she used Yoondo’s American name exclusively.”

“Did she have an American accent?”

Wheein sighs. “I don’t know. It’s been a while. I’ve kind of forgotten how that sounds. Yoondo’s is so close to gone these days.”

“So you think Krystal is Solar Eclipse and Luna…”

“Lunar Eclipse, yeah. It makes sense. With the names and all. Well, Luna’s does. And she was always the one that was better with the public. Probably more recognizable at the beginning of things.”

Then Wheein’s eye catches on something she hadn’t seen before. Under the portraits, on the desk. Candles. Unlit.

“Why would they do that?” Hyejin asks. “They have electricity.”

Wheein shrugs. “Aesthetic maybe? I’m not sure. They’re weird about that sort of thing.”

They’re distracted, that’s the answer. The portraits and the polaroid are too much. This is why art doesn’t exist on the base; it’s distracting, it pulls focus away from important things. Important things like the door behind them creaking open. Like the sound of a gun being drawn and cocked. Like a woman, dressed in silver, standing there, ready to fire.

“What are you doing here?” she asks, and her voice sounds wrong.

 

 

 

 

 

 

She doesn’t fire. Wheein, for the life of her, doesn’t know why she doesn’t fire.

Because she’s there, right there. Standing in front of them as they whip around, gun cocked and ready to fire, electricity sparking around the side of it, hinting at a more powerful type of hurt. The silver around her eyes reflects the red light with an intensity.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she warns, but still she does not fire.

“Wh-” Hyejin starts, and Wheein moves to shush her.

Because it’s not just the metal box on the collar of her shirt, altering her voice, that puts Wheein on edge. It’s the fact that there’s a familiarity to its edges. The woman in front of her, the woman in silver, she’s seen her before.

“It’s Luna,” she wants to mouth to Hyejin, but doesn’t. Years have passed, but something in her brain pings at the sound of her voice. And the mask she’s wearing, covering three fourths of her face in reflective silver, matches the one in the picture.

Hyejin backs up, slowly, and reaches into her bag. And then, after a pause that goes on too long, Lunar Eclipse turns her gun on her.

This time, she fires. Electric cords arc through the air, in time with the bullet. Wheein screams. She moves to throw herself between its path and her best friend, when something else gets there first. Hyejin’s laptop bag, rubber and leather, intercepts, stopping the lightning. The bullet keeps going, though.

It moves with precision, cutting through the bag and then the laptop inside, landing in the crook of Hyejin’s shoulder. She falls backwards, then, head hitting the desk, and crumpling into a heap on the floor.

Wheein’s head is ringing. The world around her is not quite in focus, red and terrible. She falls on her knees, still screaming, throat beginning to burn raw. Hyejin is dying behind her and Yoondo is dying in front of her and the world is all smoke.

“Wheein?” the voice above her asks and then Lunar Eclipse is there, gun still in hand. Wheein’s head jerks up, suddenly, and she sees her opponent’s eyes then, dark, hidden behind veils of fabric. A burning begins to grow in her stomach, flames engulfing first her chest and then her neck, until they’ve reached her own eyes and she can’t contain them anymore.

She throws a punch. She doesn’t care where it goes or where it lands as long as she’s _hurting_. She wants her to burn. The way the warehouse did, with a type of fire that won’t go out.

And then a clattering sound. The gun falls to the ground, with the arc of Wheein’s swing. She overcomes her shock just quick enough to beat Lunar Eclipse to the next hit, this time coming up to sock her in the jaw. She hits the mask instead, and the recoil sends an earthquake through her hand, but she keeps going.

Lunar Eclipse hits back with practiced force. A gloved hand comes up to pull Wheein away by the hair. Wheein struggles to escape from her grasp, but her grip does not lessen. “Stop fighting back,” she says. “The sooner you accept surrender the sooner it’ll be over.”

Then Lunar Eclipse shoves Wheein’s head to the side, to where she can see Hyejin, crying, curled up in the corner. Wheein has to choke down the urge to sob.

Her body gives in, then, all energy fading under the masked woman’s touch. She’s not sure she has the strength to keep fighting. “Okay,” she whispers, finally, falling into the sadness. “Okay I surrender. Just get her help”

“Get who help?” Lunar Eclipse asks, and then she hits Wheein once more and the world goes black.

 

 

 

 

 

 

They put her in the same place as Yoondo. The interrogation room. He smiles when he sees her, but it’s a little bit broken. Like he doesn’t believe it. Or like he hates her. God, she hopes he doesn’t hate her.

“You’re not real,” Yoondo says, with a laugh, and then brings his hands up to his temples. “ _You_ left me here.”

Wheein’s arms feel like lead. She’s not sure if she can move, let alone prove her existence to him. “Maybe you’re right,” she says. “Maybe I’m not.”

He nods his head. “Well, as long as you’re here… why did you do it? You could’ve just come back for me.”

“I didn’t mean to.” There’s an ache in her chest at his words. “Hyejin showed up and I was steering her away and they gave up on me too soon. It’s not so much that I gave up on you as Byulyi gave up on me.”

He sighs. “Wouldn’t it be great if that was true? You’re my only family left, you know.”

Wheein looks down at her shaking hands, knuckles bruised and bloody. There’s still a ringing in her ears. “I know. And you’re mine. You and Hye-” Her voice breaks on the word. Her name. Her throat can't bring itself to say it. The tears start again, heavy and thick, a sort of soup on her face.

Yoondo’s eyes darken. “What happened to Hyejin?” he asks, and then he shakes the thought away. “You’re not here. Right. I forgot.”

She turns her head towards him, wanting him to say the words for her. Words he can’t possibly know because he wasn’t there. Except he was there, writing on the red tiles, clutching his shoulder, just like he had been in the street a month and a half ago. A vision triggered by a bang.

He squints at her. “You’re not here, right?”

Wheein smiles through the tears and finds enough strength to reach her hand out to him. Her fingers drag along his own until finally she grabs his hand. “I’m here, Yoondo,” she promises. “I’m real.”

The fog clears from his eyes in small doses, moved along by her hand in his, maybe, or maybe just by the feeling of no longer being alone. They fall asleep like that. For how long, Wheein’s not sure, all she knows is she wakes up to the sound of his voice and the sight of his clear eyes.

“Was that the truth?” he asks, when enough time has passed, voice still slightly guarded. “Did you really not leave me?”

“Not on purpose,” she says, and ruffles her other hand through his overgrown hair. “And I came back.”

“With Hyejin?” he asks, and her stomach plummets again. “Wait-”

The door opens. A figure in the doorway speaks. “The Eclipses would like to meet with you,” Seulgi says, and then she’s kneeling beside them, handcuffs in hand, locking the two of them together.

“I thought you didn’t take prisoners,” Wheein grumbles. She’s greeted with Seulgi’s gaze, steely and amused.

“Don’t bother,” Yoondo says. “I already tried that one.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yoondo’s friend Yongsun sits, cross-legged in the same large chair. Her golden clothes hang off of her frame. Only now does Wheein see how they’re slightly too big for her. Her mask lays, discarded, on the desk in front of her. The door to the secret room lays open. Wheein had peeked in when they’d entered to see if Hyejin was still there, but she’d been pulled away by Seulgi’s firm hand.

The looking distracts her, though, enough to not understand, at first. “Where’s Krystal?” Wheein asks.

Yongsun looks at her with sad eyes that flicker down—and Wheein’s follow—to the golden mask sitting to the left of the desk, voicebox and all. Byulyi steps out of the shadows, then, in silver, walking around her and Yoondo and coming to stand beside Yongsun. She answers Wheein’s question with a simple shake of the head.

“The identities are a secret, yes,” Yongsun says, and her voice is like sunlight. “But there are secrets of a higher degree. Secrets that must be protected. And that is why you are here.”

“Your identities?” Yoondo shakes his head. “But we know who you are, already. Come on, Yongsun-”

“What secrets?” Wheein asks.

Byulyi looks at her then, eyes meeting for the first time since they’d entered the room. There’s a slowly-forming bruise on her jaw. “You saw the candles.” It’s not a question, but a statement. Her eyes, too, are sad. Wheein hasn’t seen her in a month, but she still remembers those eyes. Always a little sad, always a little bitter, but never like this.

“Originally,” Yongsun begins. “It was them. Luna and Krystal. They had this idea, this wonderful idea. And we all followed them, because we believed in them, because they were our leaders. Eclipse worked, and it grew, and we were winning, and then two years ago something changed.”

Byulyi nods to the tapestry behind them. “You might’ve noticed the date. That’s the day they disappeared. Went out into the field, left behind their gear and some notes. They never came back.”

“So Eclipse?” Yoondo asks. “It’s been dead for years? What is this, then?”

Byulyi glares at him. “I resent that implication. It’s not like you noticed.”

“What Byul is trying to say,” Yongsun says, cutting in. “Is that there were rumors around that time about Krystal’s sister. Some were saying she was still alive, somewhere in China. She said she had to go see if it was true, and we understood. The mission did not end well. We were left with a specific set of instructions for a worst-case-scenario and these masks.”

She points to the things in front of them, gold and silver. Worn with the years. Silver one slightly dented at the chin where Wheein had hit it earlier.

“That is what you saw in there,” Yongsun continues. “We’re mourning.”

“Luna and Krystal,” Wheein says. It’s not a question. “And now you and Byulyi.”

“So here’s where the hard part comes,” Byulyi continues frowning. “We’re not confident we can trust you with this.”

Wheein’s eyes fixate on her jaw, on the place where the bruise is forming, on how that means she’s the one who just shot her best friend. “That’s good,” she says. “Because I’m not so sure we can trust you, either. Fuck your treaty or whatever.”

“Now Wheein-”

“Fuck you, especially, Byulyi. You didn’t have to shoot Hyejin. You didn’t have to- Your leaders are dead, fine, but my _best friend_ might be dying right now because you got excited with that gun of yours.”

“You should be lucky she didn’t hit her,” Yongsun replies, voice cool. “Our protocol for strangers inside the base is shoot first, ask questions later.”

Wheein turns to Yongsun, then. She’s taller than her, sure, by a little bit, but maybe she could take her. “Fuck your protocol, too. What do you mean she didn’t hit her? _I saw her_. I saw her bleeding out on the ground because of your _fucking protocol._ ”

“Wait. What’s this about Krystal and Luna?” Yoondo asks.

Byulyi waves a hand to the open door. “Yongsun, can you-”

“Actually,” Wheein interrupts. “I’d prefer it if I wasn’t left alone in a room with you right now, Moon Byulyi. I might hit you again.”

Byulyi’s hands go to her bruised chin. “Oh, this? This is nothing. This-”

“No, go with him,” Yongsun says. “I’ll talk to her.”

Byulyi nods, but she doesn’t look happy. She grabs Yoondo by his handcuffs and takes him into the room with the elevator and the portraits. The door slams behind her. Wheein watches her go, waiting until she’s sure she’s gone.

It’s not hatred in her gut. Maybe something else. Want and resent all tangled up in there. Buried under badly kept secrets and almost-questions of staying and that inherent lack of trust. She should’ve just learned her lesson in Taiwan: as much thrill as a girl is to chase, a story won’t bite you in the back.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“We don’t know how to be leaders,” Yongsun says, when the door is closed and the room has been silent for long enough. She’s leaning over the desk, hands folded together. A peace offering, Wheein thinks. One that won’t work.

“You’re telling me.”

“No, I mean. We were _trainees_ , Jung Wheein. We were going to be idols. Krystal and Luna didn’t even train us, I mean. So it’s pure luck we’ve gotten this far. But, I am asking you, how would you have done this differently?”

“What do you mean?”

“Your friend. Hyejin, you called her? Imagine the two of you were here, with a position forced on you. With a stranger in the center of your headquarters and her in the other room. What would you have done?”

“I wouldn’t have shot.”

“Wheein, she didn’t hit her.”

It takes a second for Wheein to scroll through all her memories, sun and glass and smoke and blood and so much red. “No, she did,” Wheein starts, but she doesn’t sound sure. “She got hit in the shoulder…”

Yongsun smiles, and it looks like she means it, but it’s with a patronizing kind of pity. “Yoondo’s the one who got hit in the shoulder. And that was a month ago. Your friend is fine. We brought her to the hospital anyways, because we’re not sure exactly what to do with her, but she’s fine. The bullet hit the wall.”

“What are you trying to say?” Wheein asks, and she feels like she’s back in the street, mask broken, inhaling fog.

“It’s trauma,” Yongsun says. “She fired the gun and you got put back in the position of your friend maybe dying. Your brain couldn’t handle it, so it filled in what it knew. Trust me, I understand. There’s a reason Byulyi’s the only one of us who still goes out into the field, after all.”

Yongsun pushes something across the table. A bullet. The same kind that Wheein had seen Byulyi load into her gun right before their mission a month ago. Unbloodied. “You have to understand, Wheein,” she begins. “All we’ve ever had is each other. Through all the boyfriends and girlfriends and all the years of fighting… She has me and I have her. You’d kill a lot of people for a love like that.”

“I thought you and her…”

Yongsun shakes her head. “Not that kind of love. Something deeper.”

Wheein thinks of Singapore, of men in black gear charging at them, of stepping on the gas and just driving because Yoondo and Hyejin were in the back seat asleep and drunk and couldn’t protect themselves. Of the way it had thumped and crunched and she’d cried for a solid hour afterwards.

“I can understand that, I guess.”

“She likes you a lot, you know.” It’s not a new revelation, by any means, just one Wheeins’ pretty sure she’s never heard in words before. “She must have. To trust you like that. To break protocol, with me in the other room. And I know it all might be ruined, because the world is burning and everything is broken, but I think she’d want you to know.”

Wheein swallows the conflicting emotions. It’s not Yongsun’s fault that it’s so complicated. She should be nice. “Thanks for that,” Wheein says. “I don’t know what to do with that but… thanks.”

“And, for the record, I’m not expecting you to forgive her for lying or shooting or anything like that. I just don’t like to leave things unfinished.” Her eyes shoot towards the closed door, and, for the first time, Wheein wonders if she’s not the only one with emotional baggage wrapped up in this. “Do you think you’d be okay leaving him here with me when they come back? You and Byul deserve something finite.”

“Okay,” Wheein nods.

“Truce?” Yongsun asks. “Not between anyone but you and me. You can say no.”

“No,” Wheein replies. “I mean no, I’m not going to say no. I’ll give you a truce, Yongsun, on one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“Give me something to write about.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Byulyi takes her handcuffs off, in the hallway outside of the Eclipse room. There are no guards to keep her there. No doors either. “I could run away again,” Wheein tries. Byulyi greets her with a glare. “I won’t. Because I didn’t the first time. But I could, if I wanted to.”

“Where’d you go then, Jung Wheein? Because you weren’t there when we came out.”

She can’t see her face--she’s still behind her, fiddling with the cuffs--but there’s an amount of hurt there, Wheein can feel it in her voice. “Hyejin showed up,” she explains. “I had to make sure she was safe.”

Byul coughs at the mention of Hyejin’s name. “You can hate me, you know,” she says. “I’d hate you. If it was Yongsun. I’d hate you.”

“I’m not prone to hating,” Wheein says. “But I’m reserving judgement until I know if she’s okay.”

“I can take you to see her, if you want. Our resident doctor said she was stable. I didn’t shoot to kill. I usually don’t.”

“You shot _lightning_.”

“It’s not a lot. Just enough to knock her out. She would’ve been okay.”

“Yongsun gave me a story,” she says, and it feels like payback because at least she can walk away from this with something. At least it will have been worth something.

Byulyi grabs her shoulder then, like she has to stable herself. “What about?” she asks.

“That’s classified.”

“I’m serious. Because if it’s about her, make it about me. You can use my picture. I’ll take another one. Just… they’ll target her.”

“Not about her. Or about you. Well, kind of about both. About the unnamed trainees who started a movement. We won’t mention any names, and no pictures. I just think knowing your story would help.”

“Change the culture?” Byulyi asks, and it sounds like a joke. Her hand is still on her shoulder. Wheein doesn’t really feel like moving it. She likes the way it burns.

She can’t look at her. She still can’t do that. She knows she’ll just see the eyes of Lunar Eclipse, and Lunar Eclipse is the woman who she saw shoot her best friend, not the woman she kissed in the interrogation room. Not the woman she’d thought about staying for. But that’s how an eclipse works, isn’t it? It blocks things out.

“Yeah,” Wheein says. “Something like that.”

Byulyi moves closer then, and Wheein leans into her touch. The handcuff goes _click_ and falls to the ground but neither of them moves, until Wheein can feel her breath on her ear. She turns her head slightly, and her breathing gets heavy as her eyes find her lips.

“Wheein-” Byulyi moves to say something, but before she can, Wheein cuts her off. She dives into the kiss, pulling her head down to her own, pressing her back against her chest. Byulyi kisses back, hard, and it’s an anchor, in a way. The panic that’s been rising since the elevator ride finally subsides as she traces her tongue along the roof of her mouth. She moves to moan and Byulyi swallows it, hand tracing her shoulder blade.

And when Wheein looks up, right hand curled around the crook of her neck, Byulyi’s eyes are just that--hers. No eclipse in sight.

“What was that?” Byulyi asks, and she’s smiling.

Wheein smiles too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

__

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wheein’s friend is okay. Byul tries not to feel guilty about the sigh of relief she breathes at the news. She waits in the hallway outside the med bay for her, refusing to cross the threshold of the door, just in case her alter ego is written in her eyes. She’s wondered a lot about whether or not it is.

She’d like to think she doesn’t have Luna’s eyes. But sometimes, with the mask on, if she looks just right, she can see how even those who have been here the longest would believe it. Yongsun and Krystal are easier to believe. Yongsun was always the best out of the two of them at English. As long as she keeps her hair dark, she’s fine.

It had been hard to adjust to at first. One woman she loved posing as the other. The grief and the confusion and the feelings rolled into one. It burned its way through her throat like vodka until Seulgi had kissed her and siphoned some of it away. Then all that was left was the grief.

Wheein’s not like any woman she’s known before, though. There’s a lightness to her. One that Byul supposes can still exist when your whole life isn’t underground. She was foolish to ask her to stay. This place would just put that light out. And, besides, she has a family. There are others to think about.

Still, Byul thinks, in a better world…

Wheein closes the door to the med bay behind her with a smile on her face. Her friend, Hyejin, follows. She pauses when she sees her, and for a second Byul thinks about running. She doesn’t, though. Instead she holds her gaze and gives an awkward wave.

Wheein waves back, just as stiffly.

“I, uh. How are you doing?” Byul asks.

Her eyes don’t seem to be having much of an effect, as Hyejin extends a hand. “I’m fine,” she says. “I don’t think we’ve met. Ahn Hyejin. Wheein’s told me _so much_ about you-”

Wheein hits her. “Stop it.”

“Although, I would appreciate it if you gave her the benefit of the doubt more often. She’s really not trying to destroy you guys.”

Byul takes her hand and shakes it. She wonders how she keeps her nails so nice when Byul isn’t sure she’s even seen a bottle of nail polish since 2013. “Forgive me,” she says. “I don’t tend to trust reporters.”

“Well you’d better start,” Hyejin replies. “Because you’re shaking hands with one right now.”

Byul groans and turns to Wheein. “Are all of your friends members of the press?”

Wheein winks. “All except one. She’s some badass spy.”

“I’m not a spy.” Byul turns back to Hyejin just to clarify once more. “Don’t listen to her, I’m not a spy.”

“Uh huh,” Hyejin says. She looks Byul up and down, now dressed in black again, regular gun holstered at her hip. “I’ll leave you two to say goodbye.”

She turns the corner and walks down the hall, towards where Yongsun said Yoondo was resting. Byul tried not to ask too many questions about the specifics of that.

“So,” Wheein says, when she’s gone.

“So.”

“I’m not staying.”

“I figured that you weren’t. You don’t belong in the underground”

“But, that being said, I like endings. And we deserve an ending, don’t we, Moon Byulyi?”

Byul swallows. “An ending?” she asks, and the word is bittersweet on her tongue. It’s more than she thought she’d get, though, so she’s not questioning it.

Yongsun had warned her about this, though. Recruits are not photographers. Recruits are not girls with golden hair who you’re so ready to love that you’d break protocol. Recruits should be anonymous. No bonds going in.

She pulls a card out of her jacket pocket, then. “Here,” Byul says, and she hands it to Wheein. “If you ever need me.”

“What is this?” Wheein asks, obviously trying not to laugh. “Are you James Bond or something?”

“No, no. There’s a button on it.” She moves to point to the star at the end of her name. “Press it and it’ll send a signal. I can’t guarantee I’ll get it, but if it’s even just warbled static, I’ll come.”

“And what if I’m not in danger? What if I just miss you.”

Byul tries to hide the blush creeping up her neck. She doesn’t know why this woman makes her so flustered. “I’ll come then, too. If you want.”

Wheein smiles. “I do want.”

“Good,” Byul responds. “Because I do too.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

They leave on a day when the sun is shining. Byul watches them go, from the ruins of the hospital. Hyejin and Yoondo and Wheein. An odd trio, if she’s ever seen one. They’re talking and laughing as they go.

Wheein looks back, though, and waves. “COME WITH US!” she yells, across the street. “WE’RE GOING TO MUMBAI NEXT!”

Byul smiles, but shakes her head. “I CAN’T! WE HAVE A NEW MISSION!”

“WHAT IS IT?”

“DO YOU GUYS WANT US TO GO BACK?” Yoondo asks. “I’M SURE TALKING WOULD BE EASIER THAT WAY.”

“NO IT’S OKAY, WE’RE LEAVING,” Wheein assures him, and then turns back around.

They leave on a day when the sun is shining, and it’s only when they’re fully out of sight that Byul turns and walks back into the compound.

Yongsun is standing there, clutching a tablet to her chest. “Something happened, Byulyi,” she says. “Something you need to see.” And there, plain as day, is a photograph. A new one. Luna and Krystal stand next to Krystal’s sister. Hair cut and dyed. A little older. A little more rugged.

_Dear Moon and Sunrise,_ the letter opens, and Byul’s eyes water at the old nicknames.

_Who knows how long this may take to reach you. We are safe. We found her. And we’re staying here. We’re confident you two will be able to handle Eclipse, seeing as you’ve done such a good job this past year._

_Parts of China seem to be experimenting with the same blocking technology that America is using, so this will have to be pinged across many many platforms to reach you, but we just wanted to say: We love you. We’re proud of you._

_Byulyi, you should lighten up. Date some girls. (Those are Krystal’s words, not mine)._

_Yongsun, you’re not alone. Make sure you know that._

_Come visit us sometime, if you can. Maybe in a few years, if everything dies down._

_Love,_

_Soojung and Sunyoung_

“They also sent this,” Yongsun says, when Byul is done reading it. She hands her another picture, a printed out map of what seems to be a factory.

“Is this?”

“Yeah. Their main weapons factory. If we can get this-”

“We can win.”

Byul looks up at Yongsun, then, and sees the excitement in her eyes. “How would you feel about taking a few sick days?” she asks.

Yongsun is already hanging the map on the wall, pen in hand, ready to make a plan of attack. “I’d love to.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the dark!au version of this story had byul actually shooting hyejin but then i realized that i couldn't write myself out of that corner so here we are. thanks for the ride. i like this verse a lot. and i like action stories a lot so we'll see if i do more in the future. thanks for reading! let me know if y'all would like any more in this series.


End file.
